


do you feel like letting go?

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canonical Character Death, I can't help it, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, POV Second Person, Substance Abuse, Yet Another Reincarnated Proko Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 02:13:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10844358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: You can't stop thinking about what Lynch told you, and goddamn, do you wish he hadn't told you.





	do you feel like letting go?

**Author's Note:**

> have I ever mentioned how much I like Prokopenko actually? that's why I keep hurting him like this
> 
> [you already know who beta'd](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) but she is so perfect

You sit on a cinderblock fence with Ronan Lynch, waiting for Kavinsky. It’s late, but not late enough to like him, and you know he feels the same, shoulders hunched like a pasty, hornless gargoyle, the two feet between you clearly not quite enough for his comfort.  

The fence is right on the edge of town, but it might as well be the edge of the world, back country nothing stretching out into the night ahead. The very last streetlight in Henrietta makes your fingers a sickly colour, and you examine them, turn your hands over and scrutinise the gunk caught under your nails. It’s an excuse not to look at Lynch, who keeps looking at you, kicking his legs against the fence, shifting, restless, and always turning back to you like he’s actually got something to say. 

You light up; the glow of your lighter does not make your nailbeds look any healthier. Lynch is shifting under the weight of too many thoughts in his head, but you're feeling calm. Blank. Wondering if K’s going to give the front seat to him over you, and if he’ll take it or if he’ll be petty enough to refuse. 

Some night bird crows, distant, makes the open space ahead all the emptier. “Is it true about you?” Lynch finally asks, boredom and anxiety driving uneasy words off his tongue. “What K keeps saying.” 

You can't imagine K says a lot about you to him. You think he'd try to downplay you as much as he can, to win his golden boy over. “It's all true,” you say blandly. “Especially the stuff about the piercings.”  

Lynch kicks you instead of the wall. It hurts, but you resist the urge to rub the new ache on your shin. “You know what I mean, asshole. That he made you up.”

That sure is one fucking way to put it. You breathe in a long pull of smoke, and you don’t offer him a drag. 

 

A rave nestled in a sweep of Virginia forest, all neon lights and hypnotic projections, the music hectic, crowd frenetic, and you hide in a dark copse of dogwoods. It’s not your scene, and it’s not K’s scene, but you know he’ll be having fun, getting all the party kids wired.

Lynch isn’t here tonight, but he’s taking up too much space in your head. Maybe that’s the effect he has on people. You certainly can’t see the appeal in brooding, surly, venomous trash that _doesn’t_ put out.

A dozen eyes open and close on a raised canvas, blinking cyan and magenta as the music attempts to outsmart itself and becomes something unintelligible. Static moves through you, and you finally spot Kavinsky, shirt off, tattoos wrapped ravenously over his skinny torso, grin stretched wide. He chases powder with drink from a black bottle of his own creation, and the look in his eyes is wild. He is a hurricane trapped in ribs and underfed muscle; he does not look healthy.

You can't stop thinking about what Lynch told you, and goddamn, do you wish he hadn't told you. 

 

“You want to see how I did it?” Kavinsky asks you, when it’s finally just the two of you, when the others have passed out and his blood is still simmering too fiercely for him to sleep.

You’re not sure you do. The less you know, the easier it is to pretend, the easier it is to forget coming back and seeing yourself cold and still and fucked right up. And it’s tempting to keep K mythical; do you really want to look behind the veil?

But you say, “Fuck yeah I do,” ever the good dog, and your reward is his grin, is that awful little swell of your heart when he’s pleased with you. He puts a little green pill on his tongue, not one of the ones you’ve taken yourself, chases it with the dregs of his beer. Falls asleep.

The world is you and him and the absolute stillness of his bedroom. Skov snoring down the hall is distant enough to not exist. You close the space, put your ear on his chest, check his heart’s still beating. K’s cardiovascular system is a real trooper.

He’s back in minutes, lurching out of sleep like it’s a violent thing, hand wrapped around something he had not been holding before. “Here, baby,” he says, dropping a gleaming platinum lighter into your hands.

You can’t believe the weight of it, the cool feel of metal in your hands. “You made this?”

“Just like you.”

 

 

Sitting on a cinderblock fence with Lynch.

In fairness, he was there first, and you were quite unwelcome to join him. You'd thought he either wanted to be alone, and you could fuck it up, or he was waiting for K, which you wanted in on. You don't know, specifically, why he doesn't like you. You don't think he knows, specifically, why you don't like him. 

“Why do you give a shit?” you ask him. “You want to start making people too?”

“Fuck no,” he snaps back, and you bet he’s proud of his glare, nostrils flaring, all sullen fury. It doesn’t really work on you. “Dreaming up people – or stealing them, or whatever he did with you – it’s fucked up. He shouldn’t have done it.”

You’re actually surprised to be getting this from him, and you’re surprised that it burns, a low echo of the voice in the back of your mind that _there is something wrong with you now_. You keep your voice a drawl, not wanting him to know he’s getting under your skin. “Does it go against your religion?”

He shrugs, a snap of his shoulders, too intent on you. His glare is hollow. “Not the issue. It’s that you’re K’s _thing_ now, his dream thing.”

You don’t want to tell Lynch that you were K’s _thing_ anyway. You don’t want to be talking to him, but you’re the idiot who sat down and you’re not going to budge until the Mitsu comes to spare you from this conversation.

And you really don’t like the pity that’s crept into the way Lynch is looking at you.

 

Kavinsky is not going to find you in the rave. There were days in the past where you might have been glad for a break, for a chance to lose yourself in the crowd, in blacklights and unrelenting noise, but you’re past that now.

You ease yourself out of the shadow of the trees, and he grins when he sees you, throws his arms wide, stupid and sweet, and you can’t stop yourself from wondering if it’s only because Lynch isn’t around to capture his attention. “Baby boy,” he crows as you ease up to him, slinging an arm over your shoulder like you might still be his favourite. “Good night, yeah? Good fucking night.”

“Glad you’re having fun,” you tell him, let him kiss your neck, pluck his black bottle out of his loose fingers. “What’re you drinking?”

“Something special,” Kavinsky tells you, tongue moving languidly against your throat. “Have some.”

_Is it safe?_ you want to ask, but can’t. You have to play into the same young-and-deathless illusion as the rest of them, you have to not give a shit about what you take and how long your body might last, you have to think _boring side effect_ and laugh at the notion of a future. And you still can, but.

Kavinsky tugs the bottle back when you take too long, swallows a heavy mouthful of something dark and iridescent and heady as a noxious perfume, and cold creeps into your belly.

 

Lynch turns to you on that fucking fence at the end of the world, loosing the words like they’re a curse he’s so glad to be rid of, so glad to be able to pass on to you. "You know if he dies, you're done too?"

 

You fucking wish he hadn't told you. 

 

“Give me some,” you say, taking the bottle back, drinking mouthful after bitter mouthful of his dream-drink. It slides down your throat like oil, splits light out into component colours, eases the fear from your gut, and every ounce _you_ drink is an ounce that he can’t.

 

Two questions. Can Kavinsky die? 

You've thought about this before. You've watched him start fires, explosions, race a train down the tracks, seen him get shot at and  _laugh_ , seen him backlit by an inferno, gleaming teeth and shades, a proper demon, too real for this world. 

Joseph Kavinsky is immortal. 

 

Even hazy, you can’t stop seeing the possibilities. A forest fire, started by him, by you, by any one of the very high technicians keeping all their projectors and sound systems in check. Overdose. Alcohol poisoning. Something he makes and swallows that helps the cancer at his core bloom even faster.

“Who wants to have a good fucking time?” he yells, and he’s got a pile of pills in his palm, steaming out between his fingers, still plenty left for all the hungry fingers that pluck them from him. You press into his side, let him talk to the raver kids, and everything is spinning very slowly clockwise. When he presses one to your lips, you open your mouth, flick your tongue up to taste his fingertips, swallow while he strokes the back of your head.

You don’t look at how many he throws back himself. You’re not going to stop him. He wouldn’t want you to, and you don’t want to try.

 

Second question. Do you care? 

Your number's already come up once, and K brought you back, and K gave you friends and somewhere to go and someone to be, K gave you stinging kisses and the imprint of his incisors, a black eye, the chance to suck his dick. You’ve been his _thing_ for a lot longer than Lynch might think. School is nothing. You’ve already invested years in the war on your future, on the you of tomorrow who’s going to have to live with the hangover, the aftermath, the consequences that barely even exist.

If K dies, you're done, but that’s not new at all.  

 

You know that you could say something. You lie on his bed and you flick the lighter open and closed, appropriately reverent while he lies smug beside you. You could tell him what Lynch told you, that the two of you are a package deal now, that it’s up to him whether or not he calms down with the suicidal ideation and the rampant nihilism but that there’s going to be at least one casualty.

“Let’s have a party this weekend,” he murmurs into the crook of your shoulder, “A big catastrophe of a party. Invite the crews from the other towns, get everyone all together, and blow up – what could we blow up, Proko? Let’s do a building. Let’s find some cute fucking farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere and send it to heaven.”

_Will Lynch be there?_ you want to ask, but you don’t want to hear the answer. Same with _do you want to die, or do you just not mind if it happens?_ You say, “Sounds fun,” a good fucking dog, and let Kavinsky take you apart.

 

Lynch tells you you’re done if Kavinsky dies, and you sit there in silence. It’s your turn to bounce the backs of your feet against the blocks. Your cigarette burns down between your fingers, and Lynch turns away from you, restless and bitter, his poison now swilling in your gut, not his.

You can tell he’s relieved to have said it. You think about putting your cigarette out on his arm.

 

Tucked into his side as the forest rave dies, and you think you’re dehydrated, Kavinsky’s black brew still steadily, gently fucking your head, sensations reaching you in distorted bursts.

“We’re going to live forever,” Kavinsky tells you, and you nod along and try not to retch.

 

The Mitsu is a bone-white slash in the dark, pulling up too close to the fence as a dare for both of you to flinch. Neither you nor Lynch do; he throws himself forwards as soon as the car’s stopped, eager to be away from you like you’re some awkward homunculus, an affront to his religion, the kind of monster he thinks himself above creating.

Kavinsky offers Lynch the front seat, but he takes the back just to be petty and you’re the one to slide in passenger side. It’s not enough to ruin K’s mood; he's grinning, alight, both his boys beside him. His headlights are the only thing splitting those midnight roads open, the Mitsubishi the only thing light and moving in the black expanse, Kavinsky the only happy person in the car. Lynch has said his piece, and now clearly wants to get shitfaced enough to tolerate both of you.

You’re still unpleasantly sober, staring at Kavinsky now you know the limit to your resurrection, now you know your continued life depends on his.

Your days are fucking numbered.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading friends, I hope ya'll like it :V probably going to jump back to porn now I've had a nice little cock-free break
> 
> I'm on tungle over [here](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/)


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